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My buddy the sign painter called me out on my font choices
Tbh I thought I had decent taste in typefaces until my friend Jake, who paints signs by hand in Portland, looked at a poster I designed. He said, 'Why does every font you use look like it came from a 2012 hipster blog?' It hit different because he showed me how most of my fonts were just copies of what other designers were using, not what actually worked for the message. Now I spend more time looking at old hand-painted signs around town for inspiration. Has anyone else had a friend in a different design field totally shake up how you work?
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taylor_moore4d ago
Yeah @reeseanderson is right, most of us just copy until someone smarter calls us out on it.
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reeseanderson5d ago
You said "most of my fonts were just copies of what other designers were using" but honestly that's how most people learn type. Like the first time I saw Futura in a book cover I used it on everything for a year. The real trick is understanding why those old fonts work on signs and posters though. Hand painted stuff has to be readable from a distance so they use thicker strokes and more spacing between letters. Digital fonts let you fudge that pretty easy.
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